To be competitive, businesses must align the management of computer-based information technology (IT) resources with the service goals of business software applications. While there are domain-specific solutions to bridge business applications and to link them to IT resource management, a combination of competing standards, fragmented scope and missing links keeps these solutions from being either unified or successful. Web services adhere to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that facilitates integration of legacy applications. Taken alone, existing Web services lack the deep semantics to link business applications to IT infrastructure. And while there are good foundations for resource management in the IT environment, known ones such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Common Information Model (CIM) do not facilitate end-to-end management using multiple solutions, products and components in a consistent and unified way. Moreover, complications in a Data Storage Environment add to the complexity but resources in such an environment need to be managed as seamlessly as possible with other IT resources, locally or distributed. What is needed is a solution to the complexities described above in a manner that is efficient and extendable.